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Instructions forImpromptu Announcerson Sunday mornings

This posting is provided for the sake of people in attendance on a Sunday who want to make a verbal announcement themselves, instead of having it read by someone else or merely printed in the bulletin.

In the interest of making the most of our time during the Welcome and Announcements portion of our Sunday worship services, the Pastor and Parish Life Ministry have consulted together and come up with the following guidelines for those who would like to make impromptu announcements:

Full disclosure: Impromptu announcements won’t actually be impromptu.

The office must receive word from the person requesting to announce, no later than the Wednesday before the Sunday of the announcement.

No permission on a Sunday will be given for impromptu announcements, except in cases of dire emergency.

No more than two impromptu announcements may be made on any Sunday.

Announcements about church events or groups will be given preference over announcements about events by outside groups of which church members are a part.

No announcement may last more than 30 seconds. If there is more to your announcement than 30 seconds can contain, then, please, either make advance arrangements with the office for your full announcement to be printed in the Selected Upcoming Events portion of the bulletin, or else prepare and distribute a handout that has been authorized by your Ministry, Committee, or group.

Regarding your impromptu announcement:

In preparation, write down your announcement and rehearse it using a stopwatch or dimer, to ensure that you do not exceed the allotted time.

Check in with the announcer of the morning, when you arrive. They should have your spot reserved on their announcement sheet.

Sit in the first pew of the west section of the sanctuary, until it is time to deliver your announcement.

Whenever possible, avoid the use of the phrase, “You guys…”

The back story of this posting:

As you know, our worship service begins at 9:55AM on Sundays. This is because historically the Congregation developed an expectation that worship should last precisely an hour. Or, rather, the expectation has been that the spoken portion of the service should, if it begins at 10AM, end by 11AM.

Over time, however, the decision came to honor the musicianship of our organist or special music provider(s) by including Prelude and Postlude during the time that people are seated in the sanctuary. Thus, announcements were moved to the beginning of the service with Prelude following, and a Dismissal was added after the Postlude, so that worshipers would know when worship had ended (“Our worship has ended; let our service begin.”).

This has usually meant that an additional 6 to 10 minutes worth of music has encroached on time for the spoken word. To accommodate this difference, we added 5 minutes to our morning routine for the sake of announcements.

There are elements of worship that are naturally unpredictable with regard to time – for example, prayers volunteered by worshipers or introductions of visitors. But there are pieces of worship that can be “tamed,” among them the announcements.